Towards Sunday, May 1, 2016

Readings:

John 5:1-9 (People have come to Jerusalem for a big religious festival, and it's Sabbath -- a time just to rest and thankfully enjoy the sacred space and time together.  At a sacred pool in the city, noted for its occasional healing power, Jesus encounters a man lame for 38 years and without anyone to help him get to the pool at the times of healing.  So Jesus helps him find healing.)

Acts 16:6-13, 16-26 (Paul, already a rebel -- what today would be called an innovative leader, feels called to respond to a sense of need in Macedonia -- Macedonia???  -- and what comes of this adventuresome, open-ended journey, is a) a wonderful new community of faith in the gospel of Christ and the kingdom of God on Earth, and b) jail time and a legal warning for upsetting the city and the power of some of its established citizens.)

Preaching again -- after two weeks not.  I hope the congregation feels as good about this as I do.

Two stories of healing.  How can we not like them?  Who doesn't love a healing story?

But the healings of Jesus and his followers are so different from "healing" that we know.  These healings create immediate upset and civic disturbance -- and more than "the power to heal," this upset to the way things are seems to be the point of the stories.

For us, healing is usually individual and personal.  A matter of "returning to normal" or "recovering health."  And often it happens quietly and easily -- with medication; by patient process (no pun intended); and in a controlled, antiseptic, isolated environment.  There's a certain "smoothness" and sanitariness to our experience and hope of healing.

In these stories, though, healing is anything but smooth, sanitary and peaceful.  It happens against the rules.  Upsets systems of power and relationship.  Changes the whole game.  Because of who is healed and set free, and how, and to what effect, people are honestly divided about whether what Jesus and his followers are doing is good or bad for their world, and whether they support it or not.

If there is good news here, it seems to be for those (including me, when I'm honest) whose "normal" involves being caught in prisons or brokenness -- big or small, of their own or others' design -- and needing a way out.

At the very least, it makes me ready to expand my understanding of what God's will to heal us (and others) involves, and how it may be seen at work in the world today.

Towards Sunday, April 17, 2016

I'm not preaching this Sunday -- a weekend off.  A chance for the congregation to be blessed and to grow spiritually under the leadership on Brynna Toogood-Segrave, a candidate for ministry in our congregation.

And I admit my week has seemed a little disoriented without sermon and liturgy preparation at the heart of it.  Makes me realize how much I rely on my Sunday work to be the heart of my spiritual practice and devotional life. 

Even though I am not preaching, I have had occasion to think about one of the readings for this Sunday -- John 10:22-30, where Jesus talks about his sheep hearing his voice.  It brings to mind also John 21:15-17 -- that resurrection story where Jesus surprises his disciples with a breakfast of fish and bread at the seashore, forgives them (especially Peter) their denial and abandonment of him, and then commands them to feed and tend his sheep and lambs.

Question:  who are Jesus' sheep and lambs?  Who does Jesus see as his sheep and lambs in the world, that he wants -- commands, his followers to take care of?

Sermon from Sunday, April 10, 2016

Reading: Acts 9:1-6
Theme:  Why do we care for the poor and the broken?  Or ... Finding the Flow

The story from the Book of Acts is often called the conversion of Paul, but scholars point out it’s not really a conversion because Paul is already converted and committed to a life of service to God; it’s more a call, or a new understanding of what being committed to the life of God really means. 

Before we get to that, though, I want to go back to something else we highlighted earlier in our worship – the number and kind of opportunities we have to reach out this year in the season of Easter –

·         reaching out with food to the hungry in our community,

·         reaching out with care to children living in poverty in the city,

·         reaching out to help a family at risk to escape Syria and come to safety in Canada,

·         reaching out with support and love for one of our own members who was injured while volunteering here at the church. 

Feeding, healing, caring for the outcast, supporting those who are broken – it sounds like what the early church was all about in the whole of the Book of Acts, what the first followers of Jesus were known for, and why people flocked to them.

They did it because they knew Jesus, and because they had seen Jesus risen from the dead. 

Why do we do it? 

Why do we care for the poor, and show love for the outcast and broken and needy?

Is it because we’re kind and nice? 

Is it because we feel guilty?

Because we feel we can make a difference for good? 

Because we see other churches doing these kinds of things, and we want to be like other churches?

I’m sure all those motivations are in play in different ways and at different times.

But underneath it, is there something else as well?  Is there something in us perhaps that simply responds to opportunities to show love and care for others – especially for the poor and the weak?  Is there something inside us as humans – when we allow ourselves to be really and fully human, that longs for – maybe even remembers, what it’s like to be part of a community of caring and a stream of compassion and grace in the world, that knows how nourishing it is to be part of a flowing of healing love – part of something that is of God in the world – or even is God? 

We long for meaning and purpose, and there are some forms of giving and of being with others in this world that meet that need in deep and lasting ways, rather than leaving us looking for it elsewhere, as so much in our life does.

Three stories come to mind.

Story one:  from my time as campus chaplain and a student named Terry.  Terry was an English major in a four-year honours program in comparative literature.  She was the kind of student professors enjoy – smart, thoughtful, and conscientious about her work.  She was a straight A, if not a straight A+, student.

Terry’s father was a medical doctor.  I don’t remember about her mom, but both parents were accomplished professionals and it seemed sure Terry would be as well in her own field.

When I met Terry in the final years of her program, she was anxious, though.  She had been anxious all her life about living up to standards.  But now she was feeling something else as well – a deeper questioning and wondering about her life itself and the way it was unfolding.  She knew if she applied to graduate school she would be accepted and would do well.  But she also knew that more and more success and achievement on the path she was on would not answer the deep un-ease she was feeling – in fact, would only further deplete her.

After she graduated, instead of going on to grad school Terry answered an ad to live as a part-time assistant to mentally challenged adults in a l’Arche home in Trois-Rivieres.  It was a summer position that could be extended to a year.  She liked that it was a charitable and compassionate thing to do, and that she would be out of her comfort zone in many ways.  She wanted to grow as a person, and maybe come to know a bit better God’s good will in her life.

Three or four years later I received a short Christmas letter from Terry.  She was still at the home in Trois-Rivieres – the senior of three full-time workers who lived there with the residents.  Her work each day was to assist two of the residents with their chores and activities, and to manage the books and other administrative stuff.  And she wrote she was never more strangely happy, never felt more fulfilled and fed by what she was doing, never more aware of the gracious presence of God every day.

I’ve no idea where she is now or what she may be doing, but I’ve no doubt she was changed for the better – converted to know grace and holiness in all her life by her openness to the call to that l’Arche home in Trois-Rivieres.

Second story:  Do you remember 9-11, the day “the world changed” for America?  Do you remember the horror of that day?  How the question we always ask in tragedies was asked: where was God?  And do you remember the stories that emerged – maybe in answer to the question, about ordinary people in Halifax, Gander, St. John’s and many other places, who as soon as the crisis broke immediately opened their hearts and homes to travelers suddenly stranded in fear and anxiety?  I wonder if any of the people involved – both the travelers and the people who took them in, might still see those days in some odd sense as among the best, the most holy, and the most meaningful and nourishing days of their lives?

Third story:  One spring about 20 years ago I was in Winnipeg visiting my sisters.  I was there to relax and reconnect.  While I was there the spring flood also came to Winnipeg, and both the army and an army of volunteers were sandbagging daily along the river to protect homes and neighbourhoods from the rising waters.  I saw the news of it on TV one morning, and immediately I knew in my heart I wanted to go help, and be part of the effort – part of the ad hoc helping and saving community at that riverside.

I wonder why that is the only thing I remember about that time in Winnipeg?  And I wonder what would have happened – what might have shifted for me and within me – what might have changed even a little in me and my life if I had answered that call – if I had embraced that urge and gone to help with the sandbagging.

I’ll never know.

Because it is true, isn’t it, that sometimes we don’t answer the call.  We give in to the comfort and ease of where we are.  We come up with reasons – excuses, not to get involved.  We hang on to old securities and familiar routines.

Like Paul – at least for a while.  We’ve read the story of how in the end he finally gave in and heeded the call of God to embrace the way of the followers of Jesus.  But how many times and how thoroughly – even angrily, did he reject it and manage to put it off before that?

Paul was deeply schooled in the Hebrew Scriptures and the traditions of Jewish faith – which means at least in his head he knew all about God’s choice of the poor and enslaved to be a special people in the world – God’s choice of those who were nothing in the eyes of the world, to be the bearers of God’s wisdom and saving power to the powerful – God’s choice of the despised to be the vessels of God’s glory and grace for all.

So as he came to know of the activities of Jesus’s disciples and the way these poor, ordinary, hunted people were reaching out so strongly to heal the sick, to help the poor, and to gather the outcast into communities of love and new life, how could he could not feel some twinge of recognition, some stirring in his heart, at the very least some honest questioning about whether this was or was not of God?

And then as he rose in the ranks of the defenders of Temple piety and pharisaic righteousness, and began to help out with the actual persecution of these troublesome nobodies, holding the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen to death, and he saw how these people died with such faith and such holy light in their faces, was there nothing in him that felt moved, felt touched, felt at least a little compelled to explore and maybe be part of such an unexpectedly strong movement of something sacred in his time?

But Temple piety and pharisaic righteousness were powerful sedatives.  For most people these were good enough, and he was really good at it.  He had no need, really, to move from where he was if all he wanted was approval and a good reputation and a comfortable life.

But … finally, that was not enough.  On his way to Damascus he met his Waterloo, and he could no longer shut out the call of God to become part of what was stirring – what God was stirring in his time.  He heard God identifying with those that he and his friends were dead set against – with the ones who were

·         feeding the hungry,

·         caring for the poor,

·         reaching out to the outcast,

·         supporting and showing solidarity with the broken and needy,

·         in the name of Jesus proclaiming in any way they could – as he had, the year of the Lord’s favour, the community and communion of all, the healing of all Earth together.

And once Paul heard it, he could not un-hear it.  He was knocked off his certitude, and he could never regain the pride of his piety nor the comfort of his righteousness.  He saw a great light beyond his power to control it, and he knew how blind he had been to how God really is in the world, and what God really is doing.

He humbly submitted to the need to re-learn the meaning of faithfulness.  He admitted his blindness, and let God and the very people he thought were outside the circle of grace lead him into the fuller flow of God’s love and grace in his time.

And so it is – or at least can be, for us as well.  There is something in us all that yearns to be smack dab in the middle of the flow of God in our time – and find our own place in the river of God’s grace and love that flows through the world all the time.

And like Paul, like Terry as a University student, like the people of Halifax and Gander and St Johns on 9-11, like me watching the news about the flood in Winnipeg, don’t we all have our moments

·         when the river of God flows by us

·         and asks us whether and how and when we will enter into it, and let it carry us happily along?

Reading:  
Acts 9:1-6 (Paul -- at the time a strong man enforcing extermination rules against the troublesome nobodies who are following and proclaiming a crucified criminal as God's messiah, is out-of-the-blue knocked off his certitude, to have to re-examine and re-learn everything he thinks he knows about God and through what part of society and what class of people God works to heal the world.)

Already Thursday, and "all" I have still is this troubling comment about Paul's spiritual journey, that came to my laptop more than 2 weeks ago as a daily devotional from Fr. Richard Rohr.  I find it so striking, I'll just post it all here for your consideration. It will help shape whatever sermon is offered Sunday.  (I already have a few simple stories in mind.)

As you read Rohr's thoughts, where do they lead you?



Vulnerability—Even in God! (Thursday, March 17, 2016)
 
Paul’s encounter with the Eternal Christ on the Damascus Road must have sparked his new and revolutionary consciousness. He recognized that he had been chosen by God even “while breathing murderous threats” (Acts 9:1), and that the God who chose him was a crucified God and not an “Omnipotent” or an “Almighty” God. In fact, Paul only uses the word “Almighty” for God once (2 Corinthians 6:18), and then he is quoting the Hebrew Scriptures. This is quite significant considering his tradition and training. Paul’s image of God was instead someone crucified outside the city walls in the way a slave might be killed, and not of a God appearing on heavenly clouds. Christ was not the strong, powerful, military Messiah that the Jews had been waiting for throughout their history. He was in fact quite the opposite. This was Jesus’ great revelation, surprise, and a scandal that we have still not comprehended. God is not what we thought God could or should be!

Paul, like few others, read his own tradition honestly and recognized that Yahweh consistently chose the weak to confound the strong (1 Corinthians 1:17-31). He saw this in Israel itself, the barren wives of the patriarchs, the boy David forgotten in the fields, the rejected prophets, and finally Jesus on the cross. This becomes Paul’s revolutionary understanding of wisdom that is still offensive and even disgusting to much of the world and even the church. Only vulnerability allows all change, growth, and transformation to happen—even in God. Who would have imagined this?

Paul’s view of himself, of God, and of reality itself was completely turned on its head. He had to re-image how divine power worked and how humans changed. All he knew for sure at the beginning was that it was not what anyone expected. Paul went off to “Arabia” for some time to test his ideas against what he thought he was taught, to slowly allow the full metamorphosis of his soul. (Is this not the necessary path for all of us?) Only later does Paul have the courage to confront Peter and James in Jerusalem (Galatians 1:16-21), and then a full fourteen years later he tells Peter “to his face” that Peter is wrong (2:11) for imposing non-essentials on people that only give them an incorrect understanding of their correctness or righteousness. (Apparently Peter, the first Pope, was himself fallible, and he too had to learn how to be wrong to grow up!)

It takes all of us a long time to move from power to weakness, from glib certitude to vulnerability, from meritocracy to the ocean of grace. Strangely enough, this is especially true for people raised in religion. In Paul’s letters, he consistently idealizes not power but powerlessness, not strength but weakness, not success but the cross. It’s as if he’s saying, “I glory when I fail and suffer because now I get to be like Jesus—the naked loser—who turned any notion of God on its head.” Now the losers can win, which is just about everybody.

The revelation of the death and resurrection of Jesus forever redefines what success and winning mean, and it is not what any of us wanted or expected. On the cross, God is revealed as vulnerability itself (the Latin word vulnus means wound). The path to holiness is so different than any of us would have wished or imagined; and yet after the fact, we will all recognize that it was our littleness and wrongness that kept the door to union and love permanently wedged open every day of our life. In fact, there is no way to close it.

Sermon from Sunday, April 3, 2016

Reading:  Acts 5:27-41 

 

This is a three-voice sermon with Peter, Caiaphas and Gamaliel speaking in turn.  A “resurrection tree” stands at the centre front of the sanctuary.  Peter speaks first from one side of the sanctuary, and after speaking places his script at the foot of the tree.  Caiaphas speaks second, from the other side of the sanctuary, and after speaking also places his script at the foot of the tree.  Gamaliel speaks last, at the centre and in front of the tree, and after speaking also places his script at the foot of the tree.

Peter:

I am Peter.  That wasn’t the first time they had us thrown in jail for healing people in the name and the way of Jesus. 

The first time was after we healed a man who was lame and begging in front of the temple.  They didn’t like that we did it in the name of Jesus, so they kept us overnight and released us the next day with a warning not to go about “spreading lies” about Jesus and the power of his way anymore – at least not in Jerusalem, and certainly not around the temple.

It didn’t surprise us, really – the way they reacted, after they treated Jesus the way they did.  They never did accept him.  I don’t think they really ever gave him a chance.

Maybe he was a little rough around the edges, compared to them – compared to the priests and the temple lawyers and the Pharisees.  They were so smooth and polished, so professional and proficient in their piety and practice.  They had it down pat.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it?  No one could match them, be as good as them, or ever hope to be counted as acceptable and worthy.  They were supposed to be bringing us and God closer together, it seems that the way they went about it, they just drove us and God farther apart, divided us into camps of holy and unholy, clean and unclean, worthy and unworthy, good and bad

That’s what made Jesus so appealing to us – to all of us who followed him and became his disciples in any way at all.  He was open and welcoming.  He was forgiving.  He was inviting and accepting and encouraging.  He healed us and he fed us and he helped us become strong and come alive in ourselves.  He helped those who seemed good and those who were counted as bad sit at the same table and feel like the family of God together.  He made us feel – helped us live, as God’s people – as God’s beloved children, God’s beloved sons and God’s beloved daughters, together in grace and peace.

Which when I think about it, makes me feel a little surprised … or maybe not surprised, maybe just sad, that the priests and the lawyers and all the officially religious people, couldn’t accept him and his way and us and what we were doing in his name and spirit.  Because really we weren’t out to ruin anyone or anything.  It wasn’t our intent or desire to threaten the temple or the priests or anyone or anything else.

We just wanted to do God’s work.  We wanted to carry on the kingdom that Jesus revealed.  We wanted to heal the people and the city of our time.  We knew we had the power to do it – to reach out to people in the street, to forgive and heal sinners in the alleys, to feed the hungry and comfort the dying around the corner, to give power to the poor and a voice to the forgotten.  We knew it was God and God’s spirit working through us, just like God and God’s spirit had been in Jesus.  We also knew the city and its people were hungry for it, they were ready for healing and new life. 

So how could we not?  How could we not carry on, no matter if how we did it upset the people in charge?  How could we not obey God, even if it meant we went to jail every now and then for it?  How could not let ourselves be part of God’s healing desire in and for all the world, even if it meant risking and sacrificing what our life used to be, for it?

Caiaphas:

 

My name is Caiaphas.  I am one of the high priests of the Temple.  I help convene and lead the Council.  I know that I and my colleagues – even the whole temple here and all it represents are cast as the heavies in this story.

We’re seen as obsolete.  Old-fashioned.  Out of step with the times.  Obstructionist.  Self-serving and inward-looking.  Cut off and isolated from the people of the community and from the real issues of the times.  Compromised.  Tainted with the scandal of oppression and abuse of power.  Inflexible No longer able to attract.

The list could go on. 

And yes, there is some truth to the charge that in our response to the followers of Jesus, and to Jesus himself, we have acted out of jealousy and fear.  But for goodness sake, what would you expect? 

I mean the man was out there – in more ways than one.  He was preaching out on the street, he held synagogue at the seashore, he offered confession and divine absolution along the roadside, at community wells, at public picnics, private dinner parties and back yard barbecues.  He was out of control, and so indiscriminate in his openness.  He was making a mockery of all we call holy.  He was undermining my place – I mean, our authority and our God-given standing in the eyes of the people.

And his followers?  They weren’t trained.  They were uncredentialed.  They acted so sure of themselves, but they were making it up as they went along.  Appealing to the current trends.  How could you trust them?  There was no way I – I mean we, could ever work with them. 

I mean … we have the books.  The holy stories.  The tradition and its teachings.  The generations of experience, and centuries of careful interpretation of the will and way of God.  The truth – or at least the closest thing to it, that we are capable of as human beings?  Do we throw all that out?  Do we dispense with tradition and piety and the sacred rituals and practices that have opened us to God and sustained us as God’s people through thick and thin, through good times and bad, through centuries of both triumph and testing?  Does it – do we, do I, all mean nothing?

Gamaliel:

 

My name is Gamaliel.  I am a Pharisee.  I teach God’s law.  I am on the Council that Caiaphas helps convene and lead.

And I wonder.  And worry, about the way things are going.  And always can go.  The way issues get polarized.  How two different groups each feel so quickly pushed by the holy challenge of the other to speak in absolutes, in terms of us and them, of right and wrong, of black and white – as though any of us are capable of knowing the good and bad of anything or anyone so absolutely.

I know how easily we get addicted to our structures and traditions.  To our status and the things that make us feel secure.  Or important.  Or worthy.

We get so used to what we know, and what we know how to handle – and control, that we lose sight sometimes of the bigger picture – the bigger picture of all the world around us and God at work in it, and for it.

We ourselves used to be a much simpler people – back in the desert, back in the wilderness journeying time – when we too we untrained and uncredentialed and we knew it.  We knew then we were all just learners and beginners in the mysteries of God and the desires of God for the world.  We made it up as we went along.  We had Moses.  We had a cloud to follow by day.  A pillar of fire for comfort and direction by night.  We had a tent to set up each time we stopped, where God would meet us.  One stage, one day, one step at a time.

I know that in some ways we need to get back to that kind of faith and that kind of faithfulness.  If we are to remain God’s people – witnesses to the world around us of the good will of God for all the world. 

But I also know that they – the newcomers, the upstarts and outsiders, the followers of Jesus are not always or necessarily right, either.  They’re a bit motley actually – with a number of different teachings and practices that don’t always fit together well.  They have some sorting out to do. 

There’s also a certain pride to their position, underneath their humility and acceptance of persecution or mockery – a particular arrogance that in time may make them just as controlling and maybe as closed and fearful as we are. 

Not all things that appear holy, really are.  Not all movements of God’s spirit last long.  Not all communities that seem able to heal and empower people, are part of God’s long-term plan.

There’s a certain patience and humility we need to learn and practice in the way we see both ourselves and others.

Because really it’s about God, isn’t it? 

About the God beyond us all.   About the God who is beyond our structures and traditions, and beyond our trends and enthusiasms? 

And about our willingness and openness to let ourselves be part of God’s healing desire in and for all the world, regardless of where it leads us and what it costs us?